Doctors | Lessons from my daughter

I made a list of events to tell you about….

At first, I was afraid that my blog would only last a week or so… I figured I only had a handful of interesting stories…

My list still has close to 200 items on it and every day or so I remove one as I write my blog and add 1 or 2. Every story I tell you brings back more memories of things I could write…

This one particular story is short but I like it.

When Emily was just 2 ish… we needed to get some blood work done. She was a really small 2 year old. Probably closer in size to a 6 or 8 months old, with thin long arms and legs…

We were used to going to the children’s hospital where Emily’s size and syndrome didn’t affect the staff what so ever.

This time, we went to our regional hospital for the routine blood work.

I went in with my baby girl. As the nurse was getting ready to draw the blood, she looked at Emily’s arm to get it ready and said something like “Oh, that’s a tiny arm, I don’t like to draw blood on arms this small”

Me: “Well, that’s not reassuring!!!”

Nurse: “Well, if the mom is nervous, maybe the mom should go in the waiting room until I am done”

Me: “If the nurse is nervous about drawing blood on a tiny arm, the mom is not going anywhere…!”

Add the appropriately polite smile at the end of the sentence…

Did she really think I would get up and leave her with my baby???

…..

Like that was going to happen!

…..

The nurse completed the blood work and we went home.

To this day, I have never left Emily alone with a nurse or a doctor. I believe she deserves great care and I also believe she needs someone to advocate for her, someone who knows her and will stand-up for herself.

…..

Would have left your tiny daughter with the nurse?

Summer 1999!

Our family doctor finally agreed that Emily was not developing properly. It took us a year to convince her of such.

Next, we saw our pediatrician (which had seen Emily before) and she suddenly agreed that Emily needed to see a neurologist…

We saw the neurologist who agreed that Emily needed a series of tests to determine what was going on. There was such a long list of tests to do… We had to decide if we were going to do the tests separately or all at once.

We lived away from the hospital so to go once or twice a week for a couple of months to get the tests done would have been really difficult. So we decided to wait and do all the tests at once… in September.

Waiting we did…

And while we waited, we or should I say “I” imagined many outcomes…

I had such a great imagination…

I worried, cried, cuddled my baby, Emily was crying and vomiting a lot which made me worry even more…

All the worrying got me in the hospital… Appendicitis!!! Emergency surgery!!!

After the surgery when I was waking up, I had so many emotions coming at me all at once that I panicked… The poor nurse was telling me to breath deeply, that the surgery went well, that everything was fine…

….

I lost it!

Nothing was fine, my daughter wasn’t fine and I wasn’t fine…. I panicked. I started crying, forgot to breath deeply and fell back to sleep…

….

When I woke up again, that poor nurse was gone. I was released to go home and started my 4 weeks recovery…

I kept worrying and crying but eventually made it to September and to the testing.

Testing was difficult, blood work, scan (which Emily needed to be under anesthesia) heart, lungs, kidney and everything in between…

We did it… Or I should say, Emily did it…

Eventually, we got the results and the diagnosis… It is easier to know than to not know… Not knowing made my imagination go to worst case scenario!!!

Have you ever really made yourself sick worrying??? How do you manage stress???